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Dell brings Datacenter Scalable Solutions business out of stealth

Dell says there will be incremental opportunities for channel partners in its newly announced DSS business, which targets the area just below the hyperscale vendors and will see branded DSS products on the market later this fall.

Dell has formally announced the Datacenter Scalable Solutions (DSS) business, a component within Dell’s Enterprise Solutions organization aimed at large buyers in the customer segment underneath the hyperscale players. This includes web tech, telecommunications service providers, hosting companies, oil and gas, and research organizations.

“This addresses that market in between traditional IT and hyperscale customers, companies who are massive in scale and growing rapidly,” said Brian Humphries, President, Dell Enterprise Solutions Sales and Strategy. “It is a market that is growing three times faster than the x86 market [according to Dell’s own internal research] and a seven billion dollar market opportunity.”

It is also a market which Dell has been addressing unannounced with what has now been unveiled as the DSS organization for some time.

“Going live is very exciting for the team internally,” said Ashley Gorakhpurwalla, Vice President and General Manager, Dell Server Solutions. “We don’t think at this point it’s worth staying in stealth mode any longer as some of our competitors have begun to talk about it.”

“We like to show results before we talk about them,” Humphries explained, when asked why Dell began the DSS business without a formal unveiling. “As a private company, we don’t feel the need to talk about IP before it’s more firmly established in the market. This is also a competitive space, and in some cases being in stealth was to our advantage. But it has become important to come out at this point because of a recognized capability in the marketplace.”

DCS is a followup to the Dell Data Center Solutions (DCS) it set up almost eight years ago to design and build solutions for the hyperscale market segment.

“There will be differences between DCS and DSS, and DCS will continue to exist,” Gorakhpurwalla said. “DSS will be separate and distinct, but will also leverage the capabilities and expertise from DCS.”

The Dell executives stressed that DCS’ market advantage is a fast and nimble operating model that builds on Dell’s DSS experience in understanding customers’ need for differentiated product solutions and supply chain optimization. Dell DSS will feature new and optimized hardware designs, enhanced fulfillment models and accelerated product introductions, all designed to order.

“With our fast, flexible and agile model, Dell is unique in how we address this market,” Humphries said. “DSS is able to meet these high volume needs and create differentiated models for customers. Our experience serving the hyperscale giants ensures we know what we are doing and can bring this to customers just below hyperscale.”

Humphries emphasized that understanding what customers want and need is as important as the product itself.

“Our mission is to understand customer needs and goals, and give them purpose built solutions,” he said.

Gorakhpurwalla cited several customer examples, including a global service provider whose quick response time to data uses an extensive test matrix to determine what configurations are optimized for its workloads – configurations not commonly found in products readily available on the market. Dell DSS was able to bring its global supply chain capabilities and experience building fully-custom solutions to build the exact infrastructure the customer required.

Ashley Gorakhpurwalla, Vice President and General Manager, Dell Server Solutions

“These examples demonstrate the operating model is the key,” he said. “We have invested heavily in our research architecture to build out the systems for this market, so that we can provide the right feature set for the right set of products.”

Dell will be offering DSS-branded products, and Gorakhpurwalla said these will hit the market later this fall.

Finally, while DSS is aimed at the higher end of the market, Humphries said that it won’t just be a direct play.

“We won’t be offering any specific incentives around it, but there will be incremental business opportunities for partners,” he said.